I tried to send this info on a PM, but it was to large. I hope everyone will enjoy the article.
This was written about my nephew who is deaf and is now a teacher in a hearing school in Seattle.
Anchorage Daily News (AK)
March 4, 1994
Section: Lifestyles
Edition: Final
Page: F1
WITHOUT WORDS DEAF ACTOR GETS HIS MESSAGE ACROSS FREE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF SPEECH
GREG KIMURA
Daily News reporter
Staff
Seth Cox, a lanky, intense-eyed senior at East High School, recalls a vignette from his first dramatic effort. Performed at a high school competition, it was called "The Deaf Ghetto" and was all the more extraordinary because Cox is deaf. Through an interpreter, Cox explains the theme of the piece: the loneliness that comes with being different. But halfway through he raises his hands, as if to erase what has just been said. He bounds from his chair and physically runs through the act. Invisible walls encroach upon his tall, angled body, forcing him farther and farther from the outside world. Fear and anguish play on his wrinkled brow as a silent, forlorn shout forms on his lips.
He sits back down, grinning and stroking his unshaven chin, pleased he was able to convey the story as it unfolds, rather than in words.
Three years have passed since he first performed "The Deaf Ghetto," which earned a "superior" mark and was the start of a decorated high school thespian career. Now in his last semester, Cox, 18, sees it as a turning point for him, both as an actor and as a deaf person. He had found both a medium for his inner thoughts and an audience receptive to them.
"I enjoy (drama) because you can show things there that you usually can't get across," Cox said through interpreter Anna Mayra. "I can bring my own experiences there and lay them out and people seem to understand. The audience can visualize what I mean."
Cox was born with hearing, but a fever at 11 months left him deaf. The silent world is the only one he remembers, a world shared by 2.5 million other people in the United States and 14,000 in Alaska, according to Alan Cartwright of the Alaska Center for Deaf Adults.
Being deaf in a predominantly hearing world is a terrific strain, according to Cox and others. Deaf people face the same communication challenge as the rest of the world: the chasm between what we mean, what we express, and what others actually understand.
But hearing people share the language and experiences of the dominant culture, which helps them bridge that gap. Deaf individuals find it more difficult. They are a minority and they use a way of communicating American Sign Language that most people don't know and aren't interested in learning.
"They get lost in the crowd and singled out a lot of times," Cox's mother, Candy Ziegler, said. "I think it creates a lot of frustration and even sadness."
There's another side to this. Being deaf gives people access to a community and culture largely unknown to the hearing world. According to Cox, they experience heightened perception of body language and environment, moods and emotions, often communicating the sense of a thing in ways that cannot be shown in words.
This observation has been made by social critics, such as Jacques Derrida, who decry the logocentric or "word-centered" bias of Western society. The narrowing of language to the verbal and the written leaves out whole regions touch and gesture, and the volumes of meaning in an intentional silence.
"I sometimes feel sorry for people who can hear," Cox said, "because they are limited in their speaking. Too many words can get in the way of what you are really trying to get across."
At a photo session for this story, Cox warmed up by cycling through 50 or so facial expressions he might offer to the camera. He moved his narrow torso to and fro, shuffling his feet as he switched from the terrified look of a child who has witnessed a murder, to the strain and sadness of Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, to the giddy excitement of a schoolboy lost in puppy love.
But when it came time to shoot, the photographer asked Cox to stand in one place for the sake of focus.
Cox was visibly annoyed he's not able to "say" what he wants in a limited physical space, he explained later.
Deaf people not only perceive and communicate their experience of the world differently, they think about it in different ways, according to Aimee Rasch, a drama instructor at Gallaudet University, a college for the deaf in Washington, D.C. This "other way" of understanding reality arises from the way deaf people "re-present" the world to themselves and others mainly in the symbols of American Sign Language.
"They think differently, in terms and categories of movement," Rasch said. "Hand movements, gestures, facial expressions. Hearing people think in terms of sound and intonation. A verbal system doesn't give the same meaning."
American Sign Language, in written form, also looks different from English. It has its own lexicon and grammar and web of definitions and associations.
"ASL is not English," said Cox. "It's our own language and it takes our own meanings."
That is why, according to Zeigler, deaf people prefer to communicate through an interpreter rather than write a conversation in English although use of an interpreter is often costly and time-consuming. Hearing people mistakenly take for granted that the deaf want to use the dominant language of the culture, said Rasch.
But the more deaf people are forced to use a language that is not their own, the more they are "forced to the margin," Rasch said. Or, as Seth Cox put it, forced into "The Deaf Ghetto."
Cox's mother explained: "He's not able to say what he wants to say that (English) way. Even when he's signing, you have to look at him to get what he means, as well as listen to the interpreter."
Cox recalled an experience, early in his acting career, when this misunderstanding came to a head. He was acting a solo program with an interpreter, a routine that had taken high marks at an earlier tournament. He noticed that the judge kept her nose buried in the scorecard, only occasionally looking up, and even then mostly at the interpreter. When Cox saw that his marks dropped, he wanted to ask the judge how he could improve. But when he approached her, she turned away and Cox sensed "an uncomfortableness, a coldness" in her body language.
"After that, I decided to start off by telling the judges to watch the performance rather than the interpreter," he said.
Cox is known as a Wunderkind in high school drama circles. He consistently scores "excellent" and "superior" marks in solo acting and pantomime, and he recently played the role of a mute character in East High's production of the Broadway musical "The Fantasticks." Although he couldn't hear the music, he could feel it; he swayed in time with the melody on stage.
"I remember three, four years ago when I was judging, seeing Seth and thinking, 'Wow, this kid has amazing talent,' " East High drama coach Sharon Harrison said. "And his talent has matured so much since then."
Cox spent his freshman and sophomore years at West High School on the drama, debate and forensics team. But his junior year he spent at the California School for the Deaf, in Fremont. It was his first extended time living around other deaf people and, according to Cox, a period of self- revelation.
"I learned a lot about myself being with other deaf people from around the country," he said. "People there had the most beautiful ways of signing, complex and with different layers. It made me think I want to go on to a deaf college eventually."
While at Fremont, Cox competed in dramatic "story-telling," a hybrid form of signing and acting. The competition was much different from traditional drama, according to Cox, and it was stiff. Many of the techniques that had given him an edge over actors in Anchorage were familiar to the other deaf students in Fremont. But he also found the experience liberating. Story- telling opens directions in a dramatic world dominated by hearing actors.
"This is a universal problem for deaf people who want to get involved in stage and TV," said Rasch of Gallaudet University. "There aren't many characters written for the deaf, let alone challenging ones. There are also big artistic problems with adapting roles for a deaf actor. Oftentimes, directors aren't open to adaptation or don't know how to do it and don't know any better.
"They (often) don't want to because the acting world is, by nature, conservative. They don't want to chance a whole show on whether a deaf actor works or not."
According to Cox, that problem is part of the reason he chooses routines that describe the deaf experience. He wants his acting "to build bridges" between the often discreet worlds of the deaf and the hearing.
It's a move that takes acting from craft to art form, said Rasch.
At a recent tournament, Cox worked on that bridge with a pantomime called "The Deaf Tree," a riff on the age-old philosopher's problem of whether a tree that falls makes a sound when no one hears it. The judges rewarded the performance with a "superior" mark, one he hopes augurs well for his performance in the state high school drama, debate and forensics tournament later this month.
In this piece, Cox assumes the persona of a woodsman. He moves through a forest felling larger and larger trees with a chopping motion and a silent, cupped-hand call of "Timber!"
The woodsman finally takes on the largest tree in the forest, doing the chopping and making the yell. Nothing happens. He tries the call again; still nothing happens.
Then, in his perplexity, the woodsman meets a mystical forest-dweller who explains that the tree is deaf. The forest-dweller teaches him the sign language letters for "timber."
Finally, when the woodsman communicates with the tree in its own idiom, it comes crashing down.
Copyright (c) 1994, Anchorage Daily News
This was written about my nephew who is deaf and is now a teacher in a hearing school in Seattle.
Anchorage Daily News (AK)
March 4, 1994
Section: Lifestyles
Edition: Final
Page: F1
WITHOUT WORDS DEAF ACTOR GETS HIS MESSAGE ACROSS FREE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF SPEECH
GREG KIMURA
Daily News reporter
Staff
Seth Cox, a lanky, intense-eyed senior at East High School, recalls a vignette from his first dramatic effort. Performed at a high school competition, it was called "The Deaf Ghetto" and was all the more extraordinary because Cox is deaf. Through an interpreter, Cox explains the theme of the piece: the loneliness that comes with being different. But halfway through he raises his hands, as if to erase what has just been said. He bounds from his chair and physically runs through the act. Invisible walls encroach upon his tall, angled body, forcing him farther and farther from the outside world. Fear and anguish play on his wrinkled brow as a silent, forlorn shout forms on his lips.
He sits back down, grinning and stroking his unshaven chin, pleased he was able to convey the story as it unfolds, rather than in words.
Three years have passed since he first performed "The Deaf Ghetto," which earned a "superior" mark and was the start of a decorated high school thespian career. Now in his last semester, Cox, 18, sees it as a turning point for him, both as an actor and as a deaf person. He had found both a medium for his inner thoughts and an audience receptive to them.
"I enjoy (drama) because you can show things there that you usually can't get across," Cox said through interpreter Anna Mayra. "I can bring my own experiences there and lay them out and people seem to understand. The audience can visualize what I mean."
Cox was born with hearing, but a fever at 11 months left him deaf. The silent world is the only one he remembers, a world shared by 2.5 million other people in the United States and 14,000 in Alaska, according to Alan Cartwright of the Alaska Center for Deaf Adults.
Being deaf in a predominantly hearing world is a terrific strain, according to Cox and others. Deaf people face the same communication challenge as the rest of the world: the chasm between what we mean, what we express, and what others actually understand.
But hearing people share the language and experiences of the dominant culture, which helps them bridge that gap. Deaf individuals find it more difficult. They are a minority and they use a way of communicating American Sign Language that most people don't know and aren't interested in learning.
"They get lost in the crowd and singled out a lot of times," Cox's mother, Candy Ziegler, said. "I think it creates a lot of frustration and even sadness."
There's another side to this. Being deaf gives people access to a community and culture largely unknown to the hearing world. According to Cox, they experience heightened perception of body language and environment, moods and emotions, often communicating the sense of a thing in ways that cannot be shown in words.
This observation has been made by social critics, such as Jacques Derrida, who decry the logocentric or "word-centered" bias of Western society. The narrowing of language to the verbal and the written leaves out whole regions touch and gesture, and the volumes of meaning in an intentional silence.
"I sometimes feel sorry for people who can hear," Cox said, "because they are limited in their speaking. Too many words can get in the way of what you are really trying to get across."
At a photo session for this story, Cox warmed up by cycling through 50 or so facial expressions he might offer to the camera. He moved his narrow torso to and fro, shuffling his feet as he switched from the terrified look of a child who has witnessed a murder, to the strain and sadness of Atlas bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders, to the giddy excitement of a schoolboy lost in puppy love.
But when it came time to shoot, the photographer asked Cox to stand in one place for the sake of focus.
Cox was visibly annoyed he's not able to "say" what he wants in a limited physical space, he explained later.
Deaf people not only perceive and communicate their experience of the world differently, they think about it in different ways, according to Aimee Rasch, a drama instructor at Gallaudet University, a college for the deaf in Washington, D.C. This "other way" of understanding reality arises from the way deaf people "re-present" the world to themselves and others mainly in the symbols of American Sign Language.
"They think differently, in terms and categories of movement," Rasch said. "Hand movements, gestures, facial expressions. Hearing people think in terms of sound and intonation. A verbal system doesn't give the same meaning."
American Sign Language, in written form, also looks different from English. It has its own lexicon and grammar and web of definitions and associations.
"ASL is not English," said Cox. "It's our own language and it takes our own meanings."
That is why, according to Zeigler, deaf people prefer to communicate through an interpreter rather than write a conversation in English although use of an interpreter is often costly and time-consuming. Hearing people mistakenly take for granted that the deaf want to use the dominant language of the culture, said Rasch.
But the more deaf people are forced to use a language that is not their own, the more they are "forced to the margin," Rasch said. Or, as Seth Cox put it, forced into "The Deaf Ghetto."
Cox's mother explained: "He's not able to say what he wants to say that (English) way. Even when he's signing, you have to look at him to get what he means, as well as listen to the interpreter."
Cox recalled an experience, early in his acting career, when this misunderstanding came to a head. He was acting a solo program with an interpreter, a routine that had taken high marks at an earlier tournament. He noticed that the judge kept her nose buried in the scorecard, only occasionally looking up, and even then mostly at the interpreter. When Cox saw that his marks dropped, he wanted to ask the judge how he could improve. But when he approached her, she turned away and Cox sensed "an uncomfortableness, a coldness" in her body language.
"After that, I decided to start off by telling the judges to watch the performance rather than the interpreter," he said.
Cox is known as a Wunderkind in high school drama circles. He consistently scores "excellent" and "superior" marks in solo acting and pantomime, and he recently played the role of a mute character in East High's production of the Broadway musical "The Fantasticks." Although he couldn't hear the music, he could feel it; he swayed in time with the melody on stage.
"I remember three, four years ago when I was judging, seeing Seth and thinking, 'Wow, this kid has amazing talent,' " East High drama coach Sharon Harrison said. "And his talent has matured so much since then."
Cox spent his freshman and sophomore years at West High School on the drama, debate and forensics team. But his junior year he spent at the California School for the Deaf, in Fremont. It was his first extended time living around other deaf people and, according to Cox, a period of self- revelation.
"I learned a lot about myself being with other deaf people from around the country," he said. "People there had the most beautiful ways of signing, complex and with different layers. It made me think I want to go on to a deaf college eventually."
While at Fremont, Cox competed in dramatic "story-telling," a hybrid form of signing and acting. The competition was much different from traditional drama, according to Cox, and it was stiff. Many of the techniques that had given him an edge over actors in Anchorage were familiar to the other deaf students in Fremont. But he also found the experience liberating. Story- telling opens directions in a dramatic world dominated by hearing actors.
"This is a universal problem for deaf people who want to get involved in stage and TV," said Rasch of Gallaudet University. "There aren't many characters written for the deaf, let alone challenging ones. There are also big artistic problems with adapting roles for a deaf actor. Oftentimes, directors aren't open to adaptation or don't know how to do it and don't know any better.
"They (often) don't want to because the acting world is, by nature, conservative. They don't want to chance a whole show on whether a deaf actor works or not."
According to Cox, that problem is part of the reason he chooses routines that describe the deaf experience. He wants his acting "to build bridges" between the often discreet worlds of the deaf and the hearing.
It's a move that takes acting from craft to art form, said Rasch.
At a recent tournament, Cox worked on that bridge with a pantomime called "The Deaf Tree," a riff on the age-old philosopher's problem of whether a tree that falls makes a sound when no one hears it. The judges rewarded the performance with a "superior" mark, one he hopes augurs well for his performance in the state high school drama, debate and forensics tournament later this month.
In this piece, Cox assumes the persona of a woodsman. He moves through a forest felling larger and larger trees with a chopping motion and a silent, cupped-hand call of "Timber!"
The woodsman finally takes on the largest tree in the forest, doing the chopping and making the yell. Nothing happens. He tries the call again; still nothing happens.
Then, in his perplexity, the woodsman meets a mystical forest-dweller who explains that the tree is deaf. The forest-dweller teaches him the sign language letters for "timber."
Finally, when the woodsman communicates with the tree in its own idiom, it comes crashing down.
Copyright (c) 1994, Anchorage Daily News
